One for us: Hit the Trail with Alltrails

Our jobs are stressful. There are many aspects of our work that we take home and let spin in our minds, which is not so healthy. I have long been an advocate of work in mindfulness both for us and our students, but recently I have also discovered hiking. Something about my love of maps, a good view, staying mindful, and the nice little rush that comes with some cardiovascular exercise comes together when I hike. Before I lose some of you, hiking can range from walking beside a beach or in a gently graded field to scrambling up or down rock piles, so there is something for everyone. In the past several years, this interest has re-awakened as I had opportunities to hike up Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, Diamond Head in Waikiki, and a bunch of awesome trails this summer in Acadia National Park.

Did you know that there is some actual science behind the benefits of walking in nature? Check out this abstract:

More than 50% of people now live in urban areas. By 2050 this proportion will be 70%. Urbanization is associated with increased levels of mental illness, but it’s not yet clear why. Through a controlled experiment, we investigated whether nature experience would influence rumination (repetitive thought focused on negative aspects of the self), a known risk factor for mental illness. Participants who went on a 90-min walk through a natural environment reported lower levels of rumination and showed reduced neural activity in an area of the brain linked to risk for mental illness compared with those who walked through an urban environment. These results suggest that accessible natural areas may be vital for mental health in our rapidly urbanizing world. (Bratman, et al, 2015)

Travel can bring you to some great places to hike easy or harder trails, but as this study suggests, just accessing a nearby "nature experience" can make a difference in our thinking patterns. So, to bring in the tech part that you all expect from me, I'll refer you to the free (but with premium features if you want them) Alltrails website and mobile app. Create an account and you'll have access to search features to find many nature experiences near you. Filter to find easy vs. moderate or hard trails, read hiker reviews, and explore trail maps. I highly recommend having the app installed on your phone; tapping "Directions" will launch Google Maps to bring you directly to any trailhead (in hiker parlance, where you park and start) and the GPS will show you where you are on the trail map itself, should you need a little guidance.

 

For me, this great app has given me some ideas of places I've started to explore right in my backyard, such as the network of trails in the Blue Hills Reservation (10 minutes away from my house).

Free Webinar: Options for eText: Facilitating Access and Comprehension Through Electronic Text

edWeb recently hosted a Webinar in which I discussed resources related to electronic text, sponsored by Mobile Education Store, creator of great apps such as Conversation Builder and Crack the Books. This webinar and many others are available to you for free on the edWeb site. If you join their community, you'll also be able to download handouts and receive other resources. 

Options for eText: Facilitating Access and Comprehension Through Electronic Text

Presented by Sean Sweeney, Speech-Language Pathologist/Instructional Tech Specialist

Sponsored by MES Publishing

Watch the Webinar Recording

If you view the recording and would like a CE certificate, join the Everyone CAN! community and go to the Webinar Archives folder to take the CE quiz.

With the advent and proliferation of mobile devices available to students and teachers has come a wide range of options for accessing text. Electronic Texts and accompanying accessibility features such as text to speech can facilitate organization of materials, richer arrays of contexts available, and comprehension of classroom content for those with reading, language learning and other disabilities. This recorded webinar will familiarize educators with a variety of options at various price points and platforms, with demonstration of apps and features that put eTexts at your and students’ fingertips in no time. These include: iOS and Mac built-in accessibility features, Read and Write for Google and iPad, eText Platforms such as EPIC! Books for Kids, the Crack the Books series of accessible textbooks, and options for creating eTexts such as the renowned Book Creator App.

This webinar will be especially relevant for general and special education teachers, related service providers (SLP, OT), technology specialists, and administrators.

Google Apps: Collaboration, Consultation, and Supervision

The productivity tools contained in Google Apps (Drive, Docs, Slides, etc) are available to many SLPs and students through your school district's likely Google Apps for Education setup, or if not, via a free Google account. I have of late found Google Apps very useful in several ways:

-Collaborating with other professionals in written products such as proposals, presentations and other documents

-Performing consultation activity by asking students to Share select pieces of their work or projects with me

-Supervising graduate students and giving them the opportunity to practice some of the important written aspects of our job (e.g. writing parts of reports or parent communication)

Part of what makes Google Apps so popular is the built-in communication tools that are available around a document or other file. First, of course, you need to click the Share button and make the document available to the other person (or ask him/her to do the same). This allows you to work on the same document in real time without dealing with the mess of emailing different attached versions back and forth.

Commenting is one key way to collaborate on Google Docs. To comment in a document, highlight some text and click the comment icon or Insert>Comment. Your collaborator can dismiss any comments once they have been seen, but the history of comments for that document can always be viewed under the Comments button in the upper right.

I discovered this year that you can change from co-editing a document into Suggesting mode. When working with grad students or clients on a document, this enables you to put more explicit feedback into the document. 

The other person will see this annotation in the document and via a corresponding comment, can accept or dismiss it. 

I hope this year you will find these features of Google Apps useful when working with other professionals, students, or graduate interns. Keep in mind that Google Apps does not offer guarantees of confidentiality, so it is best to avoid using full names when writing evaluation reports or other sensitive documents. They can always be downloaded (File>Download as>Word) and edited to add personal information such as full names, birthdates, etc.

What does an image lead to...?

I've always been a firm believer that all students benefit from visual supports--but providing images or other visuals provides a path to language. That's the V--Visual--in the FIVES Criteria.

An image leads to:

...understanding of a vocabulary word or concept.

...associations.

...expansion of categories.

...description.

...connections and narrative.

...causal, conditional, or other structural language forms.

...engagement!!!

(among others).

The above reasons are why I am constantly endorsing the use of the free, versatile and multiple-platform Pic Collage. This app hit a bump this past fall. The Web Search, which allows you to add photos to a thematic, contextual collage very quickly and in a co-creative process with students, lost its connection to Google (Web Search allows you to search for photos and add them from the app). The developers were communicative about it and made efforts to develop their own search tool, which gradually improved over the following months, but it was a tougher sell.

A few months ago, however, Pic Collage struck a partnership with Microsoft's search engine BING! So the results are back to being as good as they ever were.

Additionally, Web Search has JUST added "suggestions" which might help you in your in-the-moment creations with students. The suggestions are specific items within the category you would be searching for, or associations related to your search. How wonderfully language-enhancing!

Results and suggestions for "trees" and "national parks" depicted above. Tap on the suggestion to point your search in a specific direction and bring up new possible images to add to the collage (tap images, then the check mark in the upper right to add images to a collage).

This past year I was involved with a productive assistive technology and language consultation regarding a student who LOVED to be in all of his classes. He just needed support to participate verbally. My advice was focused on taking some of the language "out of the air" and giving the student more visual support as conversations and topics unfolded, Pic Collage being a key tool we discussed. For example, as his consumer education class discussed forms of payment, Pic Collage could be easily used to visualize cash, a credit and debit card, check, and cell phone.

For some of my previous posts on Pic Collage, look here, here and here.

Use the Summer Olympics as a Language Context with Fiete Sports

The apps featuring Fiete, a fun little German sailor, are simple but elegant, and just this week I discovered Fiete Sports, which was featured in Apple's Best New Apps (also take a look at Fiete Farm, which has an interesting interface promoting temporal concepts around farming activities). Fiete Sports (Free!) is a nice engaging activity to pair with current events news around the Rio Olympics (hopefully the press will turn a bit more positive) or picture books about sports or sportsmanship (Mia Hamm's Winner's Never Quit is a favorite of mine, see the book or YouTube reading). This app again features a visual, conversation-spurring interface as sporting events can be selected from an opening map filled with locations and international flags. The sporting events themselves are short, sweet, and simple, such as a swimming competition that is completed by tapping one's finger on the screen. The short nature of each activity will allow you to elicit language following each turn and allow others in the group to take a turn (a good example of how pacing within an app can be important).

Edit: I had previously discussed here whether four events were enough as I mistakenly reported the app was $2.99 (for me, it was enough), but the developer asked me to correct that (Thank you, Ahoiii!). They also informed me that they had added the shot put to the existing four events: cycling, running, hurdling, swimming. Do check out the app for its simple interactions with a rich context (ripe with concepts, verbs, comparatives, causals). Enjoy the opening ceremonies this week!

Use the Summer Olympics as a Language Context with Fiete Sports

The apps featuring Fiete, a fun little German sailor, are simple but elegant, and just this week I discovered Fiete Sports, which was featured in Apple's Best New Apps (also take a look at Fiete Farm, which has an interesting interface promoting temporal concepts around farming activities). Fiete Sports (Free!) is a nice engaging activity to pair with current events news around the Rio Olympics (hopefully the press will turn a bit more positive) or picture books about sports or sportsmanship (Mia Hamm's Winner's Never Quit is a favorite of mine, see the book or YouTube reading). This app again features a visual, conversation-spurring interface as sporting events can be selected from an opening map filled with locations and international flags. The sporting events themselves are short, sweet, and simple, such as a swimming competition that is completed by tapping one's finger on the screen. The short nature of each activity will allow you to elicit language following each turn and allow others in the group to take a turn (a good example of how pacing within an app can be important).

Edit: I had previously discussed here whether four events were enough as I mistakenly reported the app was $2.99 (for me, it was enough), but the developer asked me to correct that (Thank you, Ahoiii!). They also informed me that they had added the shot put to the existing four events: cycling, running, hurdling, swimming. Do check out the app for its simple interactions with a rich context (ripe with concepts, verbs, comparatives, causals). Enjoy the opening ceremonies this week!